Apparatus XY

6Her support of the Equal Rights Amendment was consistent with her view of equality feminism. After hearing Frances Perkins speak, she commented that she could not agree "with her backing up the minimum wage laws for women only for I think that they will eliminate the women even more from a chance to earn a living" (26 March 1933 to Mrs. Mabel Mall, Box 2, 82-85, AMC). While she understood (although disagreed with) what was behind those like Perkins and the Federation of Women's Clubs who opposed the ERA, she felt that the broader group of opponents were those who sought to treat women as immature and unable to accept adult responsibilities. Sabin, on the contrary, believed "it better for all women to remove restrictions that are artificial and to permit women to find the level of their own abilities." Any distinctions in terms of special legislation should be based on wage levels not on sex (2 March 1938 to Cecelia Goodstein, Box G, APS).

7 Sabin took pride in women's achievements and did her best to help women in the field.[4]Among other activities, she supported Mary Beard in her endeavors to establish a World Center for Women's Archives. See World Center for Women's Archives, Box Wi-Z, APS. She gave advice to women who sought it, and worked to help them get fellowship and research funds, as well as opportunities for post-graduate training. She brought attention when possible both to the pioneers in medicine and women's education as well as to the younger talented researchers. Her goals were modest but real: help the women who entered science receive the best education available; enable them to do research and publish in top journals; get them fellowships; make their accomplishments known to a broader public so that women's achievements in science would be seen as a norm. She did not succeed in all of even these modest goals. The Depression doomed her plans for a women's Hospital which would have given women post-internship training, and few journalists followed up sufficiently on her attempts to bring other scientists to the public eye. The ones she regularly cited as being top in their field, such as Rebecca Lancefield of the Rockefeller Institute, still failed to be promoted to full Member. Sabin was aware of the ongoing challenges but also maintained optimism about women's position, having seen what she considered significant improvements in her lifetime. She remained committed to the importance of work and to access to the best education available for women.

The Problem

8 The problem for women began with admission to medical school itself. The twentieth century had opened with great possibilities. The Johns Hopkins University Medical School, funded in large part by a group of women in Baltimore on the terms that women receive the same admissions as men, opened in 1893 with three women (Walsh 176-77 and Rossiter Women Scientists 46). By the third entering class about one-third of the students of what was rapidly becoming the leading medical institution, were women. Also in 1893, the co-educational University of Michigan Medical School had a class of nineteen percent women (Walsh 182). In the early years of medical school professionalization, a four year program with clinical training was in itself unusual, and internships were not required for the practice of medicine. When Hopkins opened the initial fear was that too few qualified applicants would meet the stringent admissions criteria. However, as more individuals qualified for the demanding medical schools, women found themselves being intentionally limited in their admissions to the schools and to internships. Even Hopkins started to limit the number of women it would take. The Dean of the school, in response to a 1917 questionnaire, said that women should not make up more than one-fourth of the school, lest the men perceive it as feminized and decide to go elsewhere. Limited by admission quotas and shifting inclinations, women's attendance at medical schools declined in the early 1900s, returning to about five percent of the total in the late 1920s, where it held steady for the next few decades (Morantz-Sanchez 252, 234, 249).

9 Many respected schools, unlike Sabin's alma mater Johns Hopkins Medical which was legally required to accept women on the same basis as men, refused to accept women or applied severe quotas. In 1928 Sabin received a letter from a colleague suggesting a young man who was about to marry a medical student to work in Sabin's department at Rockefeller. He proposed that the man's future wife could finish her medical education at Cornell. Sabin was skeptical about the possibility noting that "since the number of women admitted to Cornell is probably limited, that might…fail" (7 Apr. 1928 to A.N. Richards, Box Richa-Ru, APS). Harvard, despite efforts on the part of women to change matters, continued to refuse to admit women until 1945. In 1918 Lois Kimball Matthews, the president of the Association of Collegiate Alumnae, wrote to Sabin saying "The proposition is again brought forward…to open the Harvard Medical School to women…" and asked for a letter from her addressing the need for women physicians to be presented, with other such letters, to the medical school faculty, the President and Overseers of the Corporation of Harvard University (16 Jan. 1918 to Sabin, Box Mall, F.P. 2-Me, APS). In her response, Sabin noted that there had been for some years, "a demand for well trained women to fill positions in hospitals, especially in the hospitals for the insane; workers in clinical laboratories and physicians for womens (sic) colleges and large institutions." She went on to refer to the need for women in obstetrics, and due to the war, in civil hospitals and reconstruction work, concluding "With the necessary limitation in the number of students which can be trained in any one school, it will be increasingly important to increase the number of schools of the first rank which will admit women" (4 Feb. 1918 to Mrs. Matthews, Box Mall, F.P. 2-Me, APS). Harvard, unfortunately, remained unconvinced and it was not until 1943 that Sabin's friend George Wislocki could inform her that that at a recent meeting of the Faculty "it was voted almost unanimously to admit them [women]" while cautioning even then that "the faculty action must come before the Overseers and Corporation for their approval and assent" (5 Apr. Series II, Box 14, Folder 4, SSC). By the time Harvard finally decided to admit women, the numbers which did not do so were in a clear minority.

10A report on medical school admission policies issued by the American Medical Women's Association in 1939 noted that in 1936-37 nine schools in the U.S. and Canada were for men only, and there were a total of 1113 women medical students. In 1937-38 the number of coeducational schools rose to 78 from 67 with the all male schools declining by two, and the total of women medical students rose to 1161. However, another statistic was less promising: the percentage of women graduates remained the same (Women in Medicine, 1939, Series V, Box 28, Folder 3, SSC).